Social Sciences

Living in bigger, denser settlements allowed the inhabitants of ancient cities to be more productive, just as is true for modern urbanites, according to a new study by scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Santa Fe Institute.

As modern cities grow, they obey certain rules. As the population increases, for example, the settled area becomes denser instead of sprawling outward. This allows people to live closer together, use infrastructure more intensively, interact more frequently, and as a result, produce more per person.

If you think Neanderthals were stupid and primitive, it’s time to think again.

The widely held notion that Neanderthals were dimwitted and that their inferior intelligence allowed them to be driven to extinction by the much brighter ancestors of modern humans is not supported by scientific evidence, according to a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Visitors to the ancient city of Teotihuacan—with its pyramidal structures arranged in careful geometric patterns, its temples, and its massive central thoroughfare, dubbed Street of the Dead—in Mexico may have the sensation they’re gazing at the remains of a society profoundly different from their own.

But new research from anthropologists armed with a bevy of recently derived mathematical equations shows that in some fundamental ways, today’s cities and yesterday’s settlements may be more alike than different.

The Olympic torch will arrive in Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics after a 123-day relay across Russia, and the team that planned the torch relay is led by a CU-Boulder alumnus with a particular passion and worldwide renown for this work.

This fall, the University of Colorado Boulder is again hosting a large class of National Science Foundation fellows. Twenty-six new graduate researchers have received NSF fellowships, bringing the total number of NSF fellows on campus to 101, a new record for CU-Boulder.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program is one of the most prestigious awards available for student researchers in the country. This year CU-Boulder was among the top 20 universities enrolling NSF fellows.

A new look at the diets of ancient African hominids shows a “game changer” occurred about 3.5 million years ago when some members added grasses or sedges to their menus, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

A person searching through the massive expanse of data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in search of details about a specific neighborhood may increasingly find statistics with colossal margins of error, such as an average income of $50,000 plus or minus $50,000.

At first, Kisori Thomas had a difficult time acclimating to the campus climate at CU-Boulder. Initially, other than her coursework, she wasn’t active outside the classroom.

Realizing she wanted a more well-rounded education, experience and personal growth, she took a big step outside her comfort zone and began looking for student leadership and multicultural organizations to join. This also included studying abroad in Chicoutimi, Canada, for a five-week French intensive program.